I told him that I ran track in junior high school, did 21 feet 8 inches in the long jump, ran 100 yards in 10.4 and high-jumped 6 feet. “When Jesse was leaving the auditorium,” Douglas recalled, “I was standing near the door. Douglas’s mother, Ilessa May France Douglas, had taken him to the event. Owens was speaking at a school in Pittsburgh, where Douglas lived. Douglas was a graduate of the university and had served on its board of trustees.ĭouglas was 14 when he met Owens in September 1936, soon after Owens won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics, shattering, as a Black man, Hitler’s hopes of using the Games as a showcase for Aryan supremacy. The University of Pittsburgh announced his death, at an extended care facility. Herb Douglas, an Olympic medalist who was inspired as a youth by Jesse Owens, emulated him as a track and field star and then honored his memory by creating an international sports award in Owens’s name, died on Saturday in Pittsburgh.
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